Flagstaff, Arizona (Again)
by notyouranswer
Summary: The day Castiel gripped Dean Winchester tight and raised him from Perdition, John Winchester went to sleep in Heaven with his arm around Mary. He woke up standing over his son in Flagstaff, Arizona. It was a second chance. No matter how many chances John gets, though, he can't save his sons. (He just wakes up in Flagstaff, Arizona. Again.) Warnings for child abuse and suicide.
1. Chapter 1

The day Castiel gripped Dean Winchester tight and raised him from Perdition, John Winchester went to sleep in Heaven with his arm around Mary.

He woke up standing over his son in Flagstaff, Arizona.

"I'm sorry," Dean was saying, curled against the wall with his arms wrapped over his stomach. "I fucked up, I'm sorry, I'm sorry-"

"What the _hell_," John breathed, taking in his surroundings. This was most definitely not one of his favorite memories.

Dean seemed to take that as a warning. He shuts up.

John swallowed down the bile in his throat.

Dean had screwed up, Sam had gone missing, and Dean had needed to learn his lesson.

John wasn't proud of this scene, but he said what he had to. Acting out the memories got you through them and he wanted out of this one.

"Letting a striga get to him wasn't good enough, huh? You wanted to make sure he signed his own death warrant?"

Dean's flinch made the old fury flare up in John. John restricted himself to hauling his son up by the jacket and shoving him into the wall.

"We're gonna find him," John told Dean. "And once we do, I'll finish with you."

Dean nodded with his eyes on the ground. John could already see the black eye swelling.

"Put some ice on that," John barked. He had no idea what was going on, but he was still a dad, damn it. "And get in the car."

Usually driving got him out of the memories. This time it didn't. John didn't dare allow himself to believe this was really a second chance, though.

Just to test the limits of what he could do, John drove to the place he'd found Sam first.

Sam was in the same decrepit shack he'd been in last time. Dean saw Sam's face peer through the window and was out of the car before John even parked.

John turned the car off and approached his sons. Dean was hugging Sam, murmuring, "Sammy, Sammy, Sammy."

"Get in the car," John said.

Neither of his sons argued. Dean slid into the backseat by Sam, though, in a silent act of mutiny.

The drive back to the hotel was silent.

"What the hell were you thinking?" John asked, staring down Sam. "You could have been-"

"What?" Sam demanded. "Killed? Eaten? Or maybe I could have been, I don't know, happy? Free? 'Cause that's what you're really afraid of, isn't it?"

John backhanded Sam across the face. Sam staggered against the bed. There was shock and fear on his face.

John stepped forward. Absently, he contemplated how easily he fell back into the moment. This didn't feel like a memory anymore. This felt real.

Some things hadn't changed, though, because Dean shoved his way in front of his brother. Dean's eye was swollen enough that John wouldn't be able to send him to school for days, but his shoulders were set.

"No," was all Dean said. John took in the fear and the utter certainty on his son's face and turned away.

"I told you to ice that eye," John said.

Sam locked himself in the bathroom for two hours. John pretended not to hear him crying.

Dean sat with his back to the bathroom door and held a bag of peas to his eye.

John sat at the table and cleaned his guns.

He'd changed something. He didn't know what that meant, only that this couldn't be Heaven. There's no fire or pain, so this couldn't be Hell.

That meant…

"Oh, shit," John whispered.

This was real.

_Second chance._

John began correcting his mistakes. The hunts he had missed, the people he had died- he could fix all of it, and he did.

The largest mistakes were the ones he had made with his sons, though. He set about correcting those immediately.

John stopped letting Dean go out on his own and forbade Sam to go to soccer practice. Dean didn't argue. Sam did.

If John hadn't known what lay in the future for his sons, the dull resignation in Dean's eyes and the furious resentment in Sam's would probably have made him relent.

John did know what would happen if he didn't protect them, though. He didn't take back his orders and he ignored Sam's pointed silence.

John didn't like it, but he had liked watching Dean get sent to Hell even less.

He was doing what was necessary. If they hated him, so be it.

John wasn't there to be their friend. He was there to prepare them for the world, and the world was full of things that were going to tear his sons apart.

Sam ran away only one more time. It was about a month after Flagstaff.

This hadn't happened the first time around, but John had a pretty good idea of where to look. John found Sam sitting in the bus stop. Sam came with him without arguing.

John ran into Sam when the kid saw Dean and stopped dead in the doorway.

"Dean?" Sam asked. His voice trembled.

"Hey, Sammy," Dean said. Dean's voice came out slurred. John shouldn't have gone for his face. People saw Dean's face.

"Did you do this?" Sam demanded, staring at John with his small fists balled.

"S'okay, Sammy," Dean said. "I'm fine. And I fucked up."

"Language," John said. He shoved past Sam and opened the fridge. He twisted off the cap of a beer bottle and took a deep swig. "Sam, your brother didn't keep an eye on you and insisted it was his fault, so he got reminded why it's important to do his job."

Sam's mouth opened and closed.

"Sammy," Dean murmured. "Leave it."

Sam shot John a venomous glare and moved to sit by Dean on the bed. John took a drink and let it slide.

John tried not to move the kids around too much to make up for the new restrictions. It didn't seem to matter. Dean's shoulders never got less tense and Sam's eyes never got less angry.

They did what he asked them to, though. That was all he could ask, although sometimes John wished he could turn Sam's anger into obedience. Dean was imperfect but at least he listened. It was becoming increasingly clear to John that the only reason Sam listened was because Dean suffered if he didn't.

Dean listened because he knew he was meant to hunt. The only problem John had with Dean's behavior was that he always placed himself between John and Sam.

John turned Dean and Sam into the kind of codependent that meant Sam could never leave Dean. It wouldn't matter about Sam's school if he was too scared of what would happen to Dean to consider leaving.

Dean had never needed any incentives to stay with Sam.

By the time Dean turned eighteen, both of John's sons were excellent shots and fighters. Dean was a better hunter and fighter than Sam by virtue of sheer size, but Sam would catch up soon. They could pick locks and handcuffs, kill a man in numerous ways, and they were as well versed in the lore as John was.

John was proud of them.

John told Dean that he might have to kill Sam on his eighteenth birthday.

John was taken aback by the sheer blankness of his son's face.

Dean stood up.

"Sammy, pack our bags," Dean called into the other room.

Sam poked his head around the doorway and glared. "Don't call me…"

Sam seems to pick up on Dean's mood. He vanishes into the other room. John hears Sam start packing.

"What do you think you're doing, Dean?" John demands.

Dean looked at him. For the first time, John saw no obedience in his eldest son's face.

"I'm leaving."

John stood up, his mind whirling. "No, you're not."

"Yes," Dean said, "We are."

John drew back his fist.

Dean pulled a gun on him.

"What the fuck do you think you're doing, Dean," John whispered. "You put that down right now or you'll spend the next week pissing blood."

Dean thumbed the safety off. "We're leaving, Dad. And we're not coming back."

"You need to be strong. You need to stay with me. You need me to save you."

Sam lugged his and Dean's duffels into the kitchen and froze.

"Far as I can tell, we've never needed you," Dean said. John would have called his tone conversational if not for the gun pointed at his chest. "Now get out of the way."

John, numb with disbelief, moved.

Dean ushered Sam out the door first. He never takes the gun off of John. John is obscurely proud at the flawless technique.

Dean slid into the driver's seat of the Impala. Sam tossed their bags in the backseat and got into the passenger seat.

John stared after the Impala's tail lights.

A few days later, he had a few too many, fell asleep at the wheel of his truck, and drifted into the path of an oncoming semi.

John woke up standing over his son in Flagstaff, Arizona.


	2. Chapter 2

His third time around, his second second chance, John did his best to raise his boys as normally as he could. He figured if he was stuck in this part of time until he got things right he could try out the apple pie life thing.

John did his best to trust them to keep themselves safe and it worked out okay, more or less. John drank a lot but he didn't hit Dean much which made it easier to sleep at night.

They stayed in Flagstaff. John got a job as a mechanic and bought a house. Dean graduated high school and joined John at the shop; Sam graduated high school and got into Stanford.

John let Sam go. It kept him staring at the ceiling at night, remembering Mary burning and picturing the girl Sam sends pictures of in his wife's place.

It was excruciating, but John had learned his lesson during his first life. He didn't try to hold his youngest back.

Dean started spending a lot of time with the same girl. She came over for dinner every week. John liked her. She kept Dean on his toes.

John unwillingly allowed himself to believe that he might get grandkids and that maybe this was how he solved it. He thought maybe this was how he kept Dean away from Alastair and Sam away from Ruby.

Dean and John drove out for Sam's graduation.

The day after the two of them left California, Jessica Moore burned on the ceiling.

Sam insisted on hunting down her killer. Dean never thought about letting his brother go alone.

John went with them, hoping against hope that this time would be different.

The truck hit the Impala at a slightly different angle.

John woke up standing over his son in Flagstaff, Arizona.

The fourth time around, his third second chance, John gave up on being nice. He instilled loyalty into his boys with force and turned them into perfect soldiers.

He sent them on a mission alone when Sam was fifteen. Sam got thrown into a window and broke his neck. When Dean couldn't find a pulse, he carried Sam's body into the Impala, drove to the nearest field, and put a bullet through his head.

John forced himself to keep living. His sons would go to Heaven and maybe this was how he kept Lucifer in the Cage. If Dean couldn't break the first seal, and Sam couldn't break the last, then the world would be saved.

Michael dug up Dean's body. The last thing John saw was the archangel's light in Dean's eyes.

John woke up standing over his son in Flagstaff, Arizona.

John left Sam and Dean with several hundred dollars and tried to kill Azazel on his own.

John woke up standing over his son in Flagstaff, Arizona.

John, cursing himself the entire time, tried to make his sons hate each other instead of him.

Dean and Sam ran away together. John couldn't find them, as hard as he searched.

A different girl burned on a different ceiling. John found his sons in Texas but they shook him off their trail easily.

He had been stupid to think that in any universe his sons would ever hate each other.

He got killed hunting a demon after the Devil's Gate opened three years earlier than it should have.

John woke up standing over his son in Flagstaff, Arizona.

John left the boys with Bobby. He got shredded by a werewolf in Wisconsin.

John woke up standing over his son in Flagstaff, Arizona.

John left the boys with Pastor Jim. John died trying to convince a cop of his innocence.

John woke up standing over his son in Flagstaff, Arizona.

John tried to replicate what had happened the first time around, except for one key difference: he intercepted Sam's Stanford acceptance letter and burned it.

Sam stayed. There was hatred in his eyes every time he looked at anything but Dean, but he stayed.

John sent Sam and Dean on a case together. The killer turned out to be a Hellhound. They dealt with it, as he had known they would.

Sam got hit by a drunk driver when he left the bar he and Dean had been celebrating in. Dean found Sam's body on the sidewalk half an hour later.

Dean drove out to the intersection of two dirt roads and made a deal.

Neither of John's sons ever told him.

He watched his eldest get torn to shreds by Hellhounds ten years later.

John left Sam clutching Dean's body, walked out of the hotel room, and shot himself.

John woke up standing over his son in Flagstaff, Arizona.

On his twelfth second chance, John decided to make it his last. John loved his sons more than anything else. The one thing that scared him anymore was the thought that he might stop loving them if he lived through enough repeats of the same time. He wasn't sure who, or what, kept sending him back, but if he got enough second chances, John knew he'd go insane.

John didn't sleep all night, trying to figure out the pattern. Sam and Dean couldn't die or things went to Hell; John couldn't die or whatever he'd done got undone. John couldn't follow the pattern of the original timeline because he wouldn't be able to save his sons if he was strapped to the Rack. Sam would die, Dean would sell his soul, and John would go mad with futility if he had to spend months knowing his son was in Alastair's hands. If he deviated too far from the original events, though, his knowledge would be useless.

John had read Catch-22 as a teenager. He was familiar with the concept of damned if you do, damned if you don't.

He still hated it.

John let things unfold the way they had his first time around. Somehow the memories hadn't faded even after all these decades. John was no longer sure if that was a blessing or a curse.

He told Sam not to come back when he left for Stanford. He left Dean on his own and drank to forget the scars he knew his son had gained hunting alone. Dean found Sam and Jessica Moore burned on the ceiling. Sam called and told John Dean was dying. John didn't call back. It took just as much effort as it had the first time.

Azazel possessed John. Sam didn't shoot.

John ordered Sam to drive the opposite way that he had the first time.

"Why? Dean's hurt bad, and if you get him killed-"

"Sammy," John said. "Please. Trust me. He'll die if we go that way."

Sam stared at him. John hadn't called him Sammy since he was six. John wondered why he'd stopped, now.

"You're explaining later," Sam said, and he threw the Impala into a U-turn.

The semi-truck appeared in the rearview mirror six minutes later.

"That truck is being driven by a possessed man," John said.

Sam swore viciously and accelerated. John was glad he'd taught both his boys how to lose a tail.

Sam lost the truck on the highway and took the next exit. Dean woke up when the Impala roared onto the exit ramp.

"'ammy?" Dean groaned. "'kay?"

"Yeah, Dean," Sam said, screeching around a corner and towards the hospital. "I'm here. I'm okay. And you're gonna be, too."

Dean nodded and passed out again.

John had fucked up a lot with his kids, but that right there-

That was the one thing he'd done right.

John explained everything to Dean and Sam. The time travel, the Seals, Hell. Everything.

Dean was the first one to speak.

"Okay," he said, rubbing a hand through his hair. "Okay."

"That's all you're gonna say?" John demanded. "'Okay'?"

"What else is he supposed to say?" Sam snapped, ready as always to defend his brother.

John took a deep breath. "I don't know. I know this is insane. I just hoped you two might have an idea."

Sam deflated a little. "Oh."

No one else spoke until the nurses came to tell Sam visiting hours were over.

"We'll figure this out, Dad," Sam said. "We will. I promise."

John gave him a wan smile. "I know, son."

He trusted his boys to figure out anything. They were the best goddamn hunters on the planet, after all.

Dean was dead the next morning. There were traces of cyanide in his IV bag and his room smelled like sulfur.

Sam sold his soul before John even knew about Dean's death.

As John was checking himself out of the hospital against medical advice, he wondered how long Sam would have taken to break. John wondered, too, if Sam was righteous enough to break the First Seal.

He wouldn't let anyone find out.

John got a shotgun from the Impala's trunk and blew his head off.

John woke up standing over his son in Flagstaff, Arizona.

After the twenty-third second chance, John began to wonder if he had escaped Hell after all.

John woke up standing over his son in Flagstaff, Arizona.

John woke up standing over his son in Flagstaff, Arizona.

John woke up standing over his son in Flagstaff, Arizona.

John wakes up standing over his son in Flagstaff, Arizona…


End file.
